High School Student Expelled For Tweeting Profanity; Principal Admits School Tracks All Tweets

from the hello-free-speech-rights dept

Tinker v. Des Moines is considered a key lawsuit in defining the free speech rights of students. While there have been a few cases that limited the ruling, it's still seen as the key case in establishing that students have First Amendment rights and that schools can't just arbitrarily shut them down.

I'm reminded of all this after hearing that a student, Austin Carroll at Garrett High School in Garrett, Indiana, was expelled from the school for a silly tweet that used the word "fuck" repeatedly. Supposedly he tweeted something along the lines of "Fuck is one of the fucking words you can fucking put anywhere in a fucking sentence and still fucking makes sense." A little juvenile, but he's in high school. He insists that he tweeted this from home, but the school insisted that it was done at school. But the details suggest the tweet came at 2:30am when he was definitely not at school.

What's coming out, however, is that the school was apparently spying on how students use Twitter:

The principal at Garrett High School claims their system tracks all the tweets on Twitter when a student logs in, meaning even if he did tweet it from home their system could have recognized it when he logged in again at school.

I'm not entirely sure what they mean here by it "could have recognized it when he logged in again at school," but it seems clear that the school was aggressively monitoring social networking activity, and chose to expel the kid because of his decision to express himself. It sounds like Austin isn't fighting the expulsion, but simply found an alternative school to complete his last few months and get his diploma, but that's pretty ridiculous. I don't see how the school has a legitimate argument for expulsion here as it appears to violate his basic First Amendment rights. Even beyond that, though, it's really pretty shameful what the school is teaching its students. Spying on students and punishing them for expressing themselves gives exactly the wrong kind of message to students.

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I hate to say it but rational justification isn't part of the control freak aspect of some school admins.

Then again, perhaps the guy that was expelled has just learned a lesson a lot of people have learned to their horror at work. Never be logged into the work/school network and be on a social networking site and using it at the same time. You're just asking for trouble.

As far as this instance is concerned I can't think of a rational reason to expel this kid for using profanity at all. Most of the juvenile sentence sounds cleaner that what you can often hear on the school yard or in the halls.

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Students say worse verbally in school on a daily basis. Going to expel them all? I guess that would cut down on the number of those pesky students they had to deal with and free up the principles time so he can get back to his own twitter account.

Correct me if I am wong but haven't similar cases gone to the SCOTUS and the decision came down that when accessing a private network (such as a secured network at a school) that users should have no expectation of privacy?

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My interpretation is that you are both correct to a point:

It sounds like he did the actual tweet itself at home, probably on his own computer. Then at a later point at school, he logged onto his twitter account at which point the school, which is obviously data-mining network traffic, discovered the profanity-laden tweet and thought this would be a great time to out themselves for snooping on all http traffic. I strongly suspect if he had been using https he would have had no problems.

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I read the article see my previous comments to all the other FUCKTARDS. He wrote FUCK at home but clearly he accessed his Twitter account FROM SCHOOL which exposed his moronic comment to the school's monitoring software. This is Darwinism in action. The kid will learn an important lesson.

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And accessing an account that contains profanity in its past posts is worth expulsion, in your mind? What lesson is that teaching? To never, ever use bad words? I'd like to think schools have more important things to teach kids.

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I believe one needs to read the accounts from both articles referenced in this Techdirt post. Also, understand that the school officials may not comprehend how their laptops are set-up and represent any access incorrectly. A critical point is that school's officials said that the twitter posting showed the school's IP address. My educated guess is that the student did tweet from home using the school laptop given to him. Furthermore, the laptop is set-up to use a server at the school as a proxy. Thus, any internet access went through the school as an intermediate step. The school could be monitoring this internet activity via it's proxy or it could log transactions on the laptop which are then reported to the school when the laptop is directly connected to the school's network. If so, and the school did not explain to students about the proxy or that their internet activity, even at home, was being monitored, then the school is in the wrong, violated the student's 1st amendment rights and violated his privacy.

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Re: SCOTUS

Yes, the Supreme Court has limited school's ability to punish free speech outside of the classroom. But most school boards, schools, and principals don't care, and will violate the standard until directly told by a court that they are in error.

It's called "modeling behavior", which is why our free speech rights get trampled all the time.

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The school just follows all the tweets of any accounts that are logged into at school. So if you check your Twitter account while at school, the school keeps track of the students user name and their twitter tag. They then follow you and likely have a "naughty" filter that raises an alert. The kid was in his/her own home @2:30am doing this on a public forum. The real interesting thing would be to see post grads poking fun at their Alma mater. The school would still be following the tweets ... hopefully enough of them are going to Law School :)

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But if they block Twitter, how are they supposed to know when their students use profanity? Ensuring that their students stick to G-rated words is far more important than having them pay attention in class.

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Why is the school concerned with his Twitter activities at all? Even if he was on campus?

This is what I was wondering too. Considering the abysmal state of IT in typical school systems, they're spending money on systems that monitor every student's twitterings? How is that at all justified by anyone?!?

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They probably spent $20,000 on this system, and then raised taxes claiming they wouldn't otherwise have the money to keep having extracurriculars like band. Oh, and presumably they have the prinicpal using school time to read every twitter of every student. Naturally that means they need an extra vice-principal, because how could the principal possibly do principal work AND monitor the students' online activity?

On the other hand, this school apparently gives laptops to all its students - maybe they have so much money they don't know what to do with it.

Also, how exactly does this "monitoring" system work? If it's waiting for the user to log in because it uses the login session to request the information, that's probably illegal. They may have the right to look at traffic going through their network... but they certainly do not have the right to use that information to do whatever they want. I could legally have a keylogger installed on my computer, but if someone then uses my computer to check their email, that doesn't mean I can legally spy on their email until they change that password.

Oh, and by the way: Expelling him doesn't stop him from tweeting profanity. They've just lost ALL leverage they have against him. Are they next going to expell his Twitter followers if they dare to access his messages?

Response to: khory on Mar 26th, 2012 @ 2:45pm

At my school, Facebook is blocked, but the administration uses twitter to send out important news and information to both teachers and students, so it isn't blocked. With this being said, if they are going to fucking let you on to fucking twitter at fucking school, then they should fucking let you say whatever the fuck you want (had to do it. lol). Also, how could he have been at school at 2:30 am?? And with him being a senior, he's probably 18 by now, which guarantees him all constitutional rights. I think he should not only fight the expulsion, but take it to the Supreme Court for violation of constitutional rights. Hell, I've had a teacher tell me to shut the fuck up. He's still working there. This whole situation, especially the protest that was put down by police- again, violating the First Amendment- is just a bunch of fucking bullshit.

Correct

@annonynous. Principal is spelled principal, not principle. Might also consider the student was using school equipment to make the inappropriate remarks. Would your employer want you doing that with their hardware? I don't think we've checked all the facts.

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He posted the comment on his twitter account from his home computer and then logged into the same twitter account at school and their monitoring system scanned the whole twitter account. So he didn't use school equipment to make the inappropriate remarks.

I agree. I don't think you've checked all the facts, like going to the linked article and either reading or watching the video of the interview...

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That is irrelevant. If an employee represents his employer with an inappropriate remark, that is one thing. If the employee does it on his own personal account without connections to his job, that should not have any bearing on his employment. The student did not claim to represent the school with his remarks and therefore it should have nothing to do with his schooling. Not to mention that it's impossible he was "using school equipment" at 2:30 AM.

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Check your assumptions. The article indicated the tweet occurred at 2:30AM, outside of normal school hours. As for the "using social media at work," it very much depends where you work and go to school. Many companies encourage thier employees to engage on social media, especially when it's in relation to thier work.

And seriously... can't we once and for all drop the ad homonym attacks? ;-)

fucking fuck

I never met a fucking school administrator with half a fucking clue about fucking technology, so i wouldn't take his fucking assertion that the the fucking tweet came from the fucking school as anything other than fucking CYA cluelessness.

Re: fucking fuck

I like to be astudent in new york by taking a course dats how to operate some of divises like how to design the ids how make atm too,os dats why people new york city ot where how wil i get the easy way?.

Good thing that Fuck is a word that you never hear or see in school. Quoting Holden Caulfield:

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.

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If you're going to punish teenagers for saying fuck, you might as well punish them for hitting puberty. It's just as natural to swear as a teen as it is to develop secondary sex characteristics. If you're really strict, they just use substitute's for swear words like frick or frak or freak.

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That is fucking stupid. The kid posted the fucking tweet at 2:30 fucking A.M. He should fucking sue the fucking school and it will get fucked over in fucking court so badly for a fucking violation o the fucking first amendment.

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My school reserved the right to fine us several hundred dollars per profanity, but most of the teachers understood how fucking stupid that was. All that policy taught us is that either the principal or the school board has a huge stick up its ass, and we got some early training in shutting up when the boss walks by.

Re: Union Oligarchy

Why the fuck are you calling them "commies"? We fucking havent had an issue with "commies" since we won the fucking Cold War! Get a fucking clue! And for fuck's sake, quit watching the fucking idiots on Fox News!

Re: My Question...

Are you kidding me they've became that sensitive in 15 years since I was in school.
Christ I told the super of my school district to fuck off and I had to do a Saturday in detention. "It's not okay to talk to people like that but I was a kid"
Well that's one messed up school for sure :/ I doubt it will stick.
The schools don't need to be snooping around in kids twitters and facebooks that's their parents jobs. For all the school knows the whole family could talk like a bunch of sailors.

Fuck in and out of school

It's the principal and school board's fault. The teachers should teach creative ways of writing - or tweeting. "Give me ten sentences explaining/describing an exceptional emotion or thing without using the word 'fuck'". I think that would be a great course. How to write clever tweets without cussing or cursing. Yeah, I know, it's already patented...

First Amendment Rights is just one (very important) issue. Why does the school have access to what students do and say away from school? It's the parents responsibility and the school should be doing only what they're intended for. I understand there are rules and standards while students are at school or a school function but otherwise this school and principal stepped WAY over the boundaries. Unless I missed some new law, policing kids after school hours isn't part of of a school's job.

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"First, I'm not convinced it's spying when these are comments made in a publicly accessible forum."

I'll agree. But they have little reason to be watching it, either.

"Second, they may have a legitimate reason for monitoring accounts they are aware of. Their handbook prohibits posting pictures of students and faculty without obtaining permission first."

They can't legitimately prohibit that. Assuming it's a public school, the students do have First Amendment rights - especially for actions done outside of school.

"Third, their handbook doesn't mention language regarding student conduct, other than that used in a threatening manner."

That's about the only case where an expulsion would be warranted for out-of-school internet use. If the student posted that he was going to shoot up the school, then student safety would demand that he not be allowed IN the school. But typed profanity? Is that really such a threat to the school that the student cannot ever be allowed to attend the school again?

There's really two issues here. One is that the school is punishing him for out of school activities, the second is that they are expelling him for mere profanity. I'm not even sure which is worse.

Its sad that a school or any company can think about hushing the people of this world. I was once told to sign a paper saying that I would not talk badly about the company I work for. The rights of people are being taken away every day. Big brother won't go away anytime soon

The kid didn't post it from school so the school has no right to expel him its as simple as that and even if he did post it from school the school should just block social sites on their computers. And as far as a fine goes how are you going to say a public school should be able to charge you even more money when you already pay for them.

Seriously? Blame this on commies? Right-wing Christians is more like it. Both want to destroy free speech but it's the right-wing Christians who want to ban certain phonetics in the erroneous notion that it will actually ban sex or discussions of sex.

Seems like if you're at school you have no need to use social networking so just block the sites. If a kid can work his way around the blocks put him in advanced tech class and help the little fucker get smarter.

When I was in HS they only monitored my activity on their computers. I would occasionally sneak into a chat room during computer class and slip a cuss word or two out. However, I was never suspended or expelled only told not to do it again.

He tweeted it at 230 AM from his own computer at his house. When he logged onto twitter at school using the mac the students have, the software the school has went through all of his tweets and found it.

Garrett High Fiasco

Read this on Facebook:

Currently circulating around the Garrett-Keyser-Butler school district:

"The entire student body at Garrett High School is organizing a protest to support Austin Carroll's constitutional right to free speech. We are planning to have ALL students in the school tweet the EXACT SAME MESSAGE at 6pm this Friday night (3/30) from their homes. Either the school will have to expel all of us, or defend why they expelled only Austin, while ignoring the "crimes" of the rest of the student body..."

A little harsh, but...

As I understand it, he accessed his site with school property. While I don't agree that the punishment matches the "crime", I'm sure there is some stipulation that when he was assigned the laptop, it was for school use only.

How is this different from where you work? I know my company's HR will swoop down in a heartbeat and will discipline anyone using company assets to access non-business sites. And guess what, they don't block those sites, because they believe in accountability and responsibility.

Like I said, I think the punishment is extreme in this case, but what a great lesson to learn so young in life. When given expectations, there are consequences for your actions if you don't abide by those expectations.

Statement

"could have recognized it when he logged in again at school,"

I believe whoever said this doesn't know the system all that well but well enough to know it spies on twitter accounts. It seems to me that if he logs on at school, they look at everything he tweets, when he goes home, it probably doesn't look but maybe it does I'm not sure, but when he goes to school and logs back in, "it could have" looked at past tweets it had not looked at yet, and then taken action

I remember getting busted in high school for surfing the net during a class. When I first set eyes on rating scale they use on the "referral form" for documenting the incident, I couldn't believe what I was seeing-- "Technology Misuse" (7) was rated as severe as Arson (4) and Theft (3) combined. I didn't get expelled though, I think I got detention for all of one day.

This is probably worthy of being protested to the local school board at the minimum, and if they won't hear you, the threat of a lawsuit might change their minds.

game creater

hay i am king of all trolls and anoymous coward stop it with the rude behavor this website is not for playing its for writing not using bad words like hell no or bitch or fatass or dont use any bad world like retarded if this cotines i will create a bloc